Fear and loathing on the rise in the Angelican Church
Conservative Anglicans Rally to Reorganize Church Power
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
DALLAS, Oct. 7 -- In a further sign of fracture in the Episcopal Church over the ordination of an openly gay bishop, thousands of conservative American Anglicans rallied here on Tuesday at a conference that advocated radically reorganizing church authority.
The meeting, called by the orthodox American Anglican Council a week before an emergency meeting of Anglican leaders in London to avert a worldwide schism, circulated a draft "call to action" urging the parent church to "create a new alignment for Anglicanism in North America."
Denouncing the House of Bishops for backing the ordination in June of a gay man, the Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire, the Rev. David H. Roseberry, rector of Christ Church in nearby Plano, said, "The Episcopal Church has begun a wayward drift that will distort the Anglican community."
"I will take your signatures and 8-by-10 glossies to a group of primates next week in London," Father Roseberry said to cheers from many of the 2,674 listed attendees, including 46 current and retired bishops, 799 priests and 103 seminarians.
Other speakers accused church leaders of betraying the Gospels and succumbing to the sexual revolution.
Specifically, the draft statement, which is widely expected to be voted on before the close of the session on Thursday, called on the primates, or 38 leaders, of the Anglican communion under the Archbishop of Canterbury to erase traditional church boundaries and "encourage faithful bishops to extend episcopal care, oversight and mission to across current diocesan boundaries."
That could allow bishops opposed to ordaining gay priests and the blessing of same sex unions, another divisive issue in the church, to try to extend their reach to like-minded congregations across the nation.
Although dissidents were essentially barred from attending the conference, some checked into the Wyndham Anatole hotel, home of the conference, and offered comments. The call to erase diocesan boundaries, said Jim Naughton, a spokesman for the Washington Diocese, which backed Bishop Robinson's ordination, "sounds like a good way to destroy the church entirely."
It would allow "empire-building" bishops to "pluck good-looking parishes from other dioceses," Mr. Naughton said.
"The only metaphor I can think of," he added, "is the Civil War."
